"No, Sis, it was just a rumor--I don't 'low it was true. When folks can't give you any name or place--it most generally ain't so."

The men drove on.

It was Sat.u.r.day. Jim Bart had gone down to town for the weekly supplies and Sherm was busy with odd jobs. He asked Jane to go up to the hill top occasionally to make sure there were no fresh signs of the fire, though Jim Bart had a.s.sured him the danger was over. Sherm noticed that the wind had changed. It was blowing freshly from the very direction where they had seen the fire the preceding night.

Chicken Little obediently made trips once an hour until noon; she could detect nothing to occasion alarm. After dinner her mother set her to making doughnuts and she forgot all about it.

Mrs. Morton was not so well to-day and Jane persuaded her to go to bed.

Drawing the blinds to, she put a hot iron to her mother's feet and left her to sleep. The clock striking four attracted Jane's attention as she came back into the sitting room, the last doughnut was draining in the collender while Annie mopped the kitchen floor.

She stood irresolute for an instant, undecided whether to read or to fetch some walnuts from the smokehouse for Sunday. Dr. Morton always liked to have a basket of walnuts handy on Sunday afternoons. "I guess I'll get the nuts, and perhaps I'd better run up the hill to be sure that old fire hasn't had a change of heart. Father says often some little side fire smolders and burns after the main fire is all out.

Though I guess one would have showed up long before this if there'd been any this time."

She argued with herself for two or three minutes, finally deciding that it wasn't much trouble to go take a look, even if it were foolish. Just outside the door she met Sherm and he walked up to the crest with her.

Half way up the slope Chicken Little suddenly stopped, sniffing suspiciously. "Sherm, I believe I smell smoke again."

Sherm stopped also to draw in a long breath. He did not wait to announce his observations, but broke into a run for the top of the hill. Chicken Little followed him a length in the rear. Sherm took one look and gave vent to a surprised whistle. Chicken Little stared, fascinated, at a tiny line of fire burning merrily on a hillside not a mile distant.

"Jumping Jehosophat!" exclaimed Sherm, "how did it ever creep up on us this way?"

Jane was thinking rapidly. She scarcely noticed what he said.

"Sherm, Frank left the water barrels and the mops and everything on the wagon, didn't he?"

"Yes--what----"

"Are the barrels filled?"

"Yep, do you think----"

"Sherm, run hitch the bay team to the wagon quick. I'll get Marian and warn Annie not to tell Mother--she's asleep still. Hurry, Sherm, every minute's precious!"

Sherm's "All right" drifted from him on the run. He was already on his way to the stable. He realized that Jane knew more about fire fighting than he did.

Jane hurried to the cottage. Marian listened to her news, white to the lips.

"Annie can take Jilly. Perhaps I'd better ride over after Mr. Benton."

"Marian," protested Chicken Little, "there isn't time. And if Mr.

Benton's home, he has probably seen it, too, and is trying to protect his own place. No, we've got to work fast. Unless we can run a fire guard before the fire reaches that tall gra.s.s on the division line, the whole place is a goner! It isn't coming very fast yet. Here, I'll run with Jilly over to the house and you put on a pair of Frank's trousers--your skirts might catch. I'll get that old pair of Ernest's.

Hurry, Marian, hurry!"

Chicken Little gathered up Jilly and started on the run.

Both Marian and Jane reached the stable yard just as Sherm drove the heavy farm wagon clattering out of the gate. They hurriedly climbed in and Sherm lashed the horses into a gallop. As they pa.s.sed the cottage, Marian exclaimed: "Did you get matches either of you?"

Sherm slowed up the team and examined his pockets.

"A handful."

"Stop a moment--I'll run fetch a box. It takes a lot." Chicken Little was over the wheel before the words were fairly out of her mouth.

She was back in a jiffy with the matches, which she proceeded to divide among them, while the horses leaped forward again.

"Stop on the backbone where the Santa Fe trail strikes the road."

Precisely four minutes later Sherm pulled up the panting team. Chicken Little promptly took command. She had been out many times with her father and brothers and knew exactly what to do.

"Wet your mop--take a bucket of water and fire right along the trail, Marian,--that buffalo gra.s.s burns slow. Call if it starts to get away from you. I'll begin there by the hedge. Drive about fifty yards farther on, Sherm,--the horses will stand. Fill all the buckets and wet the extra mops. We're liable to want them in a rush."

"All right, Jane, save your breath--you'll need it. Careful there, Mrs.

Morton, beat out the flames along the trail as you go. Never mind how fast it whoops the other way. Caesar's ghost! that fire is getting close!"

The waving, irregular lines of flame on the hillside were coming steadily on, now leaping up several feet high as the breeze freshened, now creeping close to the ground when the gusts died away. The wind was fitful.

Marian and Sherm both had their trail of fire flickering into a blaze before Chicken Little got hers kindled. Her hands shook so she could hardly hold the match. The first flickered and went out, a second, then a third, blackened, before she could coax the stubbly gra.s.s to burn. She caught up a bunch of weeds, set it blazing in her hand and dragged it swiftly along the ground. Tiny swirls of yellow flame wavered in her wake, crackled feebly for an instant in the shorter herbage, then, reaching out tongues into the longer blue stem beyond, leaped forward like a frolicsome animal. Sherm's and Marian's lines of fire were eating their way merrily toward hers on each side.

It was easy to beat out the flame in the Buffalo gra.s.s, which formed their safety line toward the house, and the three soon had several hundred feet of fire running to meet those menacing flames on the neighboring hillside. For a while it seemed almost pretty play save for that haunting dread of disaster. But the dripping mops were heavy for girls' wrists and arms, the constant stooping and rising and the lifting of the heavy buckets pulled painfully on aching muscles. They must backfire for a third of a mile before they dared hope the place was safe.

A field of winter wheat adjoining the wagon road where they had started, and extending down to the bank of Big John, was the best of protection to the lower half of the farm. West from this, there was neither track nor field to break the tindery sweeps of prairie gra.s.s, until the strip of breaking on the north boundary of the pasture was reached. The old Santa Fe trail along which they were firing, fortunately extended to within some two hundred yards of the breaking, and was their safeguard against the ever-present danger of letting the fire get away from them to the rear.

Older heads would have selected that hundred yards of high gra.s.s as a starting place, while they were fresh and best able to cope with its perils. Chicken Little was leaving it to the last. Swiftly as the three worked, the head fire was rapidly gaining on them. Again and again, one of them glanced toward the house in the hope that Jim Bart might have returned, or some neighbor have seen their danger and be on the way to help. Not a human being was in sight in any direction.

Marian straightened up with a groan and glanced despairingly at the head fire. Sherm's gaze followed hers anxiously.

"We've got to do better than this, girls. Here, Chicken Little, make a torch of some of those resinous weeds--those long crackly ones--and fire just as fast as you can. I'll follow with the mop and yell if I can't manage it."

The plan worked well for a time--their haven of hope, the brown strip of breaking, seemed to move steadily nearer. But Chicken Little and Marian were fast becoming exhausted. The main fire was now so close that its smoke was beginning to drift in their faces. Prairie chickens and quail, startled and confused by the double line of flame, whirred above their heads, uncertain how to seek safety. A terrified jack rabbit leaped up almost at Sherm's feet. Rabbits, ground squirrels, one lone skunk, and even an occasional coyote, darted past them. Back at the road where they had begun, the head fire was already meeting their line of back fire and dying down in sullen smoke. Still, that hundred yards of blue stem was untouched.

They paused a moment at its edge in hurried consultation.

"Let's souse all the mops--dripping wet--and trail across first,"

suggested Chicken Little in short, labored gasps. She had been running for several minutes.

"Yes, and then fire back. Christ!--we must hurry!" Sherm, too, was breathless. "Can you stick it out a few minutes longer, Marian?"

Marian Morton's face was drawn and colorless. She nodded and rested a moment, leaning on her mop.

For the next sixty-five yards the blows of the wet mops rained down with the precision of clock work. Twice the flames started in quick eddies back of their line, but, panting, the girls almost sobbing, they beat them back. The smoke was growing stifling. The wind, freshening, blew it from both fires full in their faces. They could see only a few feet ahead.

"Light another torch and run, Chicken Little--there's no time to lose--we must chance it!"

Chicken Little obeyed silently. Half way to the breaking she stumbled and fell. Her torch of twisted gra.s.s flew from her hand, scattering the burning fragments about her. Before she could get to her feet, the gra.s.s was ablaze all around. Quick-witted Sherm threw her a mop, then beat his way toward her. Marian, summoning her last remaining strength, ran to help, but sank to the ground in a faint before she could reach Jane.

Sherm and Chicken Little, beating, stamping madly, did not see her fall.

The flames fairly licked up the long gra.s.s. They beat them out around Jane only to see them spread in an ever-increasing circle. Chicken Little's legs gave way under her and she sank helplessly down, watching the rushing fire. Sherm struggled on with parched throat and stinging eyes, but he, too, was fast becoming exhausted in the unequal fight, when a strong pair of hands seized the mop from his straining arms and rained swift blows on the flaming gra.s.s. Answering blows resounded from four other stout pairs of hands and an irregular line of charred vegetation was soon all that was left to tell the tale of the danger they had escaped.